1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a head restraint that prevents a magnetic recording head of a hard disk drive from striking the disk when the drive is subjected to a shock load.
2. Description of Related Art
Hard disk drives contain magnetic recording heads that are magnetically coupled to a rotating magnetic disk(s). Each recording head is typically mounted to a gimbal of a flexure arm. The head, gimbal and arm are commonly referred to as a head gimbal assembly (HGA). The flexure arms are attached to an actuator that has a voice coil. Data is typically stored along a plurality of concentric track across the radius of the disk. The voice coil cooperates with magnets to rotated the arm and move the recording heads across the surfaces of the disk so that the heads can access the various tracks of data.
Each recording head has an air bearing surface that cooperates with a flow of air created by the rotating disk to create an air bearing. The air bearing separates the head from the disk to prevent mechanical wear of the two components.
Hard disk drives are sometimes subjected to external shock loads that can cause the heads to strike or slap the disks. Such an event may damage the heads or the disks. For this reason some disk drives move the heads to a non-data portion of the disks when the drive is powered down. The actuator arm is then latched in place to prevent movement of the heads.
Even when latched into position a shock load may still cause the heads to slap the disks. Although the heads are typically located in a non-data zone, head slapping may still create particles that contaminant the disk and corrupt the drive. It would therefore be desirable to provide a head restraint that prevents the recording heads from striking the disks when the disk drive has unloaded the heads.